ANGELIC EMBODIMENT AND

THE FEMININE REPRESENTATION OF JESUS:

RECONSTRUCTING CARNALITY IN THE
CHRISTIAN KABBALAH OF JOHANN KEMPER

E R. W
When we were Hebrews we were
orphans and had only our mother,
but when we became Christians we
had both father and mother.
Gospel of Philip

In the long and variegated history of Judaism, ideas expressed regarding the nature of the body have been reflective of both internal and
external considerations and perspectives. It should come as no surprise
that the issue of embodiment has occupied a major role in the delineation of boundaries that stubbornly separate and bridges that flexibly connect Judaism and other liturgical-faith communities. Especially,
though not exclusively, the complex and often acrimonious relationship
between Judaism and Christianity has revolved about perceptions of the
body. The Early Modern Period is no exception to this rule, but there
is something unique that was underfoot at this time given the increased
loosening of the borders between Jews and Christians and the consequent challenge to maintain assertions of separateness and inassimilability.1 Conversion, in particular, is a phenomenon that can shed much
light on the prevailing understanding of the body and the role the latter
plays in shaping the identity of ones self and the other.2
One of the most fascinating Jewish converts to Christianity in the
Early Modern Period was Moses ben Aaron ha-Kohen of Cracow
(), who received the name Johannes Christianus Jacobi when
1

Particularly relevant to this study is the essay by Richard Popkin, Christian

Jews and Jewish Christians in the th Century, in Jewish Christians and Christian Jews:
From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Richard H. Popkin and Gordon M. Weiner
(Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, ), .
2 See, for instance, Steven F. Kruger, The Spectral Jew: Conversion and Embodiment in
Medieval Europe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ).

he was baptized by Johannes Friedrich Heunisch on July , in

Schweinfurt, Germany. The manuscripts of his Hebrew works, written
in the early part of the eighteenth century during his tenure as Hebrew
tutor at Uppsala University in Sweden, indicate, moreover, that he
adopted the new surname Kemper.3 The story of Kempers spiritual
odyssey and the intricacies of his attempt to prove the truth of his
new faith on the basis of kabbalistic, and especially zoharic, sources
have been studied by a number of scholars.4 In a previous study, I
explored in great length the intricate effort of Kemper to demonstrate
that the messianic faith of Christians was in fact the truly ancient
esoteric tradition of Judaism.5 Needless to say, the polemical strategy
of Kemper yielded an interpretation of the Kabbalah that differs
dramatically from the texts upon which he commented. Indeed, the
utilization of Jewish mystical lore, specifically the Zohar, to substantiate
the Jewish roots of Christianity, on the part of Kemper places him in
close proximity to the Christian Kabbalists of the Renaissance. In a
fundamental way, however, Kemper differs from the notable Christian
humanists who availed themselves of kabbalistic doctrine. Kempers
rabbinic background imposed upon him the need to preserve the
nomian framework of Kabbalah even as he sought to undermine that
3 The details of Kempers conversion are narrated in the biographical account
published on the occasion of his baptism under the title Unterthniger Bericht (Altdorf,
). I am indebted to Joseph Eskhult for providing me with a copy of this invaluable
document during my visit in January to the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in
the Social Sciences on the campus of Uppsala University.
4 Hans Joachim Schoeps, Rabbi Johan Kemper in Uppsala, Srtryck ur Kyrkohistorisk Arsskrift (): ; idem, Barocke Juden, Christen, Judenchristen (Bern and
Munich: Francke, ), , translated into English by G.F. Dole, Philosemitism
in the Seventeenth Century, Studia Swedenborgiana (): ; idem, Philosemitismus
im Barock: religions- und geistesgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr, ),
; idem, Philosemitism in the Baroque Period, Jewish Quarterly Review n.s.
(): , esp. ; Shifra Asulin, Another Glance at Sabbatianism, Conversion, and Hebraism in Seventeenth-Century Europe: Scrutinizing the Character of
Johan Kemper of Uppsala, or Moshe Son of Aharon of Krakow, Jerusalem Studies in
Jewish Thought (): (Hebrew). On the probable relationship of Kemper
and Swedenborg, see Marsha K. Schuchard, Emanuel Swedenborg: Deciphering the
Codes of a Celestial and Terrestrial Intelligencer, in Rending the Veil: Concealment and
Secrecy in the History of Religions, ed. Elliot R. Wolfson (New York and London: Seven
Bridges Press, ), ; idem, Why Mrs Blake Cried: William Blake and the Sexual
Basis of Spiritual Vision (London: Century, ), .
5 Elliot R. Wolfson, Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper,
in Millenarianism and Messianism in the Early Modern European Culture: Jewish Messianism in
the Early Modern World, ed. Matt D. Goldish and Richard H. Popkin (Dordrecht and
London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, ), .

framework by arguing that belief in Jesus, which is attested in the

mystical teachings and practices, surpasses Jewish ritual. In contrast
to the typical profile of the Christian Kabbalist, including a figure
like Guillaume Postel, who affirmed a form of Christian Judaism
predicated on the belief that Christians must acknowledge the origins
of their religion in Mosaic law,6 Kemper upheld the theurgical import
of the kabbalistic symbols that he appropriated. The literary works
composed by Kemper display an astonishing blend of Jewish learning
(including Halakhah, Aggadah, Kabbalah) and Christian doctrine, and
the thread that ties these two together is the theosophic orientation
derived primarily from the zoharic corpus. While the intricate weaving
of these different strands fostered a worldview that deviated from
the traditional Kabbalah, it is also true that Kempers Christological
readings on occasion illumine the site where the doctrinal lines thought
to separate the two Abrahamic faiths begin to be blurred.
In this essay, I will elaborate on a theme that I discussed briefly in the
aforementioned study, the feminine construction of Jesus in the writings
of Kemper.7 I will not only amplify my earlier analysis here, but I will
draw out the implication of this imagery for Kempers conception of
the body.
The representation of Jesus in female imagesand this is to be distinguished from the depiction of the masculinity of Christ in effeminate,
emasculated, or asexual terms8is much older in the history of Christian symbolism and most likely related to the appropriation of speculation on Sophia and the Holy Spirit from Jewish sources in an otherwise
predominantly masculine Christology,9 a tendency that is well-attested,
6 Marion L. Kuntz, Guillaume Postel: Prophet of the Restitution of All Things: His Life and
Thought (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, ), ; Bernard McGinn, Cabalists
and Christians: Reflections on Cabala in Medieval and Renaissance Thought, in
Jewish Christians and Christian Jews, . In the preface to the second translation of the
Zohar, Postel declares his aim as showing that Christ is the purpose of the law, finis
enim Legis est (cited by McGinn, op. cit., ).
7 Wolfson, Messianism, .
8 See the trenchant discussion of this matter, including a lengthy response to
Bynum, in Leo Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion,
second edition, revised and expanded (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ),
, . See also David Morgan, Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular
Religious Images (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), .
9 A possible scriptural source for the maternal imagery is the description in
Matthew : (with parallel in Luke :) of Jesus as the hen that gathers her brood
under her wings, which should be read intertextually with Deuteronomy :. See
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, The Divine Feminine: The Biblical Imagery of God as Female

for instance, in a number of documents from Late Antiquity that have

been classified as exemplary of the multifaceted phenomenon known
as Gnosticism.10 I will refrain here from delineating the relevant textual and material sources that attest to this phenomenon as to do so
responsibly would take us too far afield.11 Without engaging the matter
of historical precedent or influence, let me note that the relaxing of the
gender/sex correlation implied by this symbolic identification can be

(New York: Crossroad, ), ; idem, Women, Men, and the Bible, revised edition
(New York: Crossroad, ), ; Elaine Guillemin, Jesus/Holy Mother Wisdom (Mt.
:), in The Lost Coin: Parables of Women, Work and Wisdom, ed. Mary Ann Beavis
(London and New York: Sheffield Academic Press, ), .
10 Numerous scholars have written on this dimension of Gnostic literature, and here
I will make reference to two relevant studies: James M. Robinson, Very Goddess and
Very Man: Jesus Better Self, in Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism, ed. Karen L. King
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, ), , and in the same volume, Karen L. King,
Sophia and Christ in the Apocryphon of John, .
11 On this theme in the late middle ages, especially among Cistercian monks in the
twelfth century, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality
of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), ; idem,
Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley:
University of California Press, ), ; Jean Leclercq, Women and St Bernard of
Clairvaux, trans. Marie-Bernard Sad OSB (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, ),
. See also Joan Gibson, Could Christ Have Been Born a Woman? A Medieval
Debate, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (): . This theme continued to
flower in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as is attested, for example, in the
theological imagination of Julian of Norwich, who depicted Jesus as the generative
mother, as well as in the sermons of Meister Eckhart, who applied the expression a
motherly name (ein meterlich name) to the Father to designate the pure potentiality of
the divine to conceive the Son, the Nothingness of the natural power (ntiurlchen
kraft) for generation, as opposed to fatherhood (vaterlicheit), which is the primordial
fullness of the personal power (persnlichen kraft), the active source of bearing. See
Julian of Norwichs Showings, translated from the critical text with an introduction by
Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and James Walsh, S.J., Preface by Jean Leclercq (New York:
Paulist Press, ), , , ; Bynum, Jesus as Mother, , ,
note , , note , , ; Sarah McNamer, The Exploratory Image:
God as Mother in Julian of Norwichs Revelations of Divine Love, Mystics Quarterly
(): ; Denise Nowakowski Baker, Julian of Norwichs Showings: From Vision to
Book (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), , ,, , ,
; Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Julian of Norwich and the Mystical Body Politic of
Christ (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, ), , ,
, , , ; Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian, new
edition (New York: Paulist Press, ), , , , , ; Barbara Newman,
God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, ), , , , ; Bernard McGinn, The Mystical
Thought of Meister Eckhart: The Man From Whom God Hid Nothing (New York: Crossroad,
), , .

seen as an important catalyst for the exegetical strategy employed by

Kemper in his articulation of the female persona of Jesus. The uniqueness of Kempers approach, however, is brought into sharp relief when
one considers, for instance, the view of Postel that Mary and the female
savior, who bore the name Joanna, were personifications of Shekhinah in
the material world.12 In spite of the longstanding tradition that allocated
a maternal nature to Jesus, there is no attempt on Postels part (or any
other thinker, to the best of my knowledge) to render the male Savior
in these terms. The approach of Kemper is closer to the deployment of
female characteristics to describe the gender of Jesus that is attested in
some of the radical Moravians, who flourished later in the eighteenthcentury under the leadership of Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, a charismatic Protestant preacher whose teachings and practices
began to take root in the Wetteravia area of Germany and then spread
to other parts of Europe and eventually made their way to Lutheran
and Calvinist colonies in North America. Adherents to this Moravian
sect did not challenge the traditional view that the biological sex of
Jesus was male, but they did avow that from a gender perspective it was
feasible to use female images figuratively to describe the attributes and
functions of Christ, such as the metaphor of the nursing mother or the
portrayal of the side wound either in the form of the womb from which
believers are spiritually reborn or as the vagina through which souls are
erotically united with the deity.13 The belief in a maternal Jesus, coupled
with the symbolic representation of the Holy Spirit as mother,14 and the
practical bestowing of the right to preach and to hold other ecclesiastical offices on women,15 put these Moravians in conflict with the more
12 Yvonne Petry, Gender, Kabbalah and the Reformation: The Mystical Theology of Guillaume
Postel () (Leiden: Brill, ), , .
13 Aaron S. Fogleman, Jesus Is Female: The Moravian Challenge in the German
Communities of British North America, The William and Mary Quarterly ():
; idem, Jesus Is Female: Moravians and Radical Religion in Early America (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, ), . My summary account is indebted to
the research of Fogleman, as is my knowledge of other relevant sources cited in the
following two notes.
14 Craig D. Atwood, The Mother of Gods People: The Adoration of the Holy
Spirit in the Eighteenth-Century Brdergemeine, Church History (): ;
Steven Kinkel, Our Dear Mother in the Spirit: An Investigation of Count Zinzendorf s Theology
and Praxis (Lanham: University Press of America, ), .
15 Otto Uttendrfer, Zinzendorf und die Frauen: Kirchliche Frauenrechte vor Jahren
(Herrnhut: Verlag der Missionsbuchhandlung, ), ; Beverly Prior Smaby,
Forming the Single Sisters Choir in Bethlehem, Transactions of the Moravian Historical
Society (): ; Moravian Womens Memoirs: Their Related Lives, , ed. and

mainstream Protestant clergymen, who were politically threatened by

the possibility of a social egalitarianism, however limited it may have
been, in their church communities.
Leaving aside the question regarding the possible influence of kabbalistic ideas on Zinzendorf,16 it is noteworthy that the feminization
of the suffering Christ proffered by this German pietist bears a striking affinity with Kempers portrayal of Jesus in female topoi based
on his Christological appropriation of zoharic symbolism informed by
the eschatological standpoint of seventeenth-century Sabbatianism, and
particularly the identification of a male messianic figure with feminine
configurations of the divine.17 When judged from this perspective, the
views proffered by Kemper can be placed in a larger historical context
that can shed light on his distinctive understanding of the body. What
Kemper expressed reflects a much older polemical tactic employed by
both Jews and Christians in their respective efforts to belittle the opposing faith by associating it with corporeality, typically engendered as
feminine, in contrast to true spirituality, which is characterized as masculine. With his idiosyncratic amalgamation of Jewish esotericism and
Christian piety, Kemper subtly undermines this line of attack by concomitantly ascribing a spiritual status to the somatic and a somatic status to the spiritual. The polemically-charged female characteristics are
adopted by Kemper and transferred to the incarnate Christ. The ostensibly broken body, the humbling of the divine taking on the investiture
trans. Katherine M. Faull (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, ), xxviixxxi; Peter
Vogt, A Voice for Themselves: Women as Participants in Congregational Discourse in
the Eighteenth-Century Moravian Movement, in Women Preachers and Prophets Through
Two Millennia of Christianity, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker (Berkeley:
University of California Press, ), .
16 This point has been argued most forcefully by Marsha K. Schuchard, Dr.
Samuel Jacob Falk: A Sabbatian Adventurer in the Masonic Underground, in Millenarianism and Messianism, ; idem, Why Mrs Blake Cried, , , , . For
an alternative analysis of Zinzendorf s attitude toward Judaism, see Christiane Dithmar, Zinzendorfs nonkonformistische Haltung zum Judentum (Heidelberg: Winter, ).
17 Regarding this theme, see Elliot R. Wolfson, The Engenderment of Messianic
Politics: Symbolic Significance of Sabbatai Sevis
Coronation, in Toward the Millennium:
.
Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco, ed. Peter Schfer and Mark R. Cohen
(Leiden: Brill, ), ; idem, Constructions of the Shekhinah in the Messianic
Theosophy of Abraham Cardoso With an Annotated Edition of Derush ha-Shekhinah,
Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts (): . See also Bruce
Rosenstock, Messianism, Machismo, and Marranism: The Case of Abraham Miguel
Cardoso, in Queer Theory and the Jewish Question, ed. Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz,
and Ann Pellegrini (New York: Columbia University Press, ), , esp.
.

of the material world, is thereby redeemed and upheld as an icon of a

new form of textual embodiment, affording an opportunity to the one
who accepts Jesus, and especially to the Jew whom Kemper is seeking
to convert as part of his own messianic scheme, to transmute the flesh
into word by patterning itself on the Word made flesh.18 In treating the
body as the text that is an image of the text that is a body, Kemper
is greatly influenced by the kabbalistic notion of the hyperliteral body,
that is, the presumption that the body in its most elemental form is
composed of the Hebrew letters that are contained in the Tetragrammaton, the mystical essence of Torah.19 A critical difference, of course,
lies in the fact that, for Kemper, the textualization of body is fostered
not by visually contemplating the divine name through exegetical study
of and practical commitment to the Written Torah, the guf elohi, but
by being incorporated through faith into the corpus Christi, the Logos
(memra) that is the primordial Torah, but which is also identified as the
new Torah (torah h. adashah),20 which is the Oral Torah composed of
the dicta of Jesus conserved in the Gospels.21
We can speak, therefore, of reciprocity between Jesus and the human: just as the body of the former is the image that becomes text, so
the body of the latter is an image of that text. According to Kemper,
this is the correct interpretation of the scriptural notion that Adam was
created in Gods image (zelem
elohim)the image is indeed corporeal,
.
but it refers specifically to the body of Christ. As he expressed it in
Beriah. ha-Tikhon, He created the world and Adam in his image and
his likeness as the apostles discerned when Jesus broke the bread.22 Or
18 Interestingly, the interpretation of incarnation as a textual embodiment that I
have elicited from Kemper bears a striking affinity with the view proffered in the
allegedly Valentinian Gospel of Truth. See Elliot R. Wolfson, Inscribed in the Book of
Living: Gospel of Truth and Jewish Christology, Journal for the Study of Judaism ():
, esp. . Also relevant is the interpretation of Origen offered by Virginia
Burrus, Creatio Ex Libidine: Reading Ancient Logos Differently, in Derrida and Religion:
Other Testaments, ed. Yvonne Sherwood and Kevin Hart (New York: Routledge, ),
.
19 Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination
(New York: Fordham University Press, ), .
20 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b: Metatron, which is the angelic
name of Christ, is there identified as the Oral Torah on account of the new Torah.
See also Beriah. ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. b, a.
21 Beriah ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ba; Avodat ha-Kodesh, MS
.
Uppsala Heb. , fol. b. For citation and analysis of other passages in Kempers
compositions related to this theme, see Wolfson, Messianism, .
22 Beriah ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ab.
.

again, commenting in Matteh Mosheh on a statement in the Zohar that

Daniels image [diyokneih] did not change even when he was he was
in the lions den and therefore he was saved,23 Kemper explained that
this is because he believed in the Messiah, who is the divine image and
his semblance [zelem
elohim u-temunato]. Therefore, Daniel had a proper
.
human image [zelem
ha-adam ha-yashar] like the one through which the
.
holy One, blessed be he, created Adam, and Adam in his transgression
destroyed that image, but the one who believes in Jesus Christ becomes
a new man [adam h. adash] and he receives the primordial image [hazelem
ha-kadmon].24 Kemper is obviously influenced by the typological
.
relationship between Adam and Jesus that had a profound influence
on the history of Christianity based principally on the view set forth in
the epistles by Paul or by those who amplified his approach.25 In line
with the Pauline anthropology, Kemper maintains that through Jesus
the punishment of death incurred by humanity as a result of the fall
is overcome. We can speak, accordingly, of Jesus rectifying the sin of
Adam. Kemper departs from the more standard Christian perspective,
however, by resisting the distinction between the natural body of the
first Adam and the spiritual body of the last Adam. Being reborn
in Christ does not mean, as it did for the author of Ephesians (:
), that one puts on the new man by being renewed in spirit or
mind; it entails rather that the divine image with which Adam was
created, the image borne by Jesus in his physical embodiment, is
restored to the person that proclaims faith in the Messiah. Remarkably,
in the continuation of this discussion, Kemper writes that when the
Jews were circumcised, by means of this sign they received and were
garbed in the new man.26 That the divine image relates to the somatic
and not to the pneumatic is made explicit by Kemper in another
passage: The corporeal human [adam gufani] is created in the image
of the likeness of the icon of the man above [zelem
demut diyokna adam
.
she-lema #alah], and this is the Messiah.27 I would suggest that this
23

Zohar :a. In the Lublin Zohar used by Kemper, which was published in ,
the reference is to the section on Genesis, .
24 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ba.
25 Robin Scroggs, The Last Adam: A Study in Pauline Anthropology (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, ); William D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in
Pauline Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, ), , , , .
26 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.
27 Ibid., fol. b. See ibid., fol. a, where the attribution of the term hok to the
.
Messiah is explained by the fact that his image was engraved with the face of a human,
for he is the divine image (she-diyokno h. akukah bifnei adam she-hu zelem
elohim).
.

orientation betrays the influence of rabbinic and kabbalistic sources

on Kemper. Further evidence for this influence can be seen in the
fact that Kemper perceived his own literary productionsexplications
of the oral text of the Gospel by way of interpreting the hidden
Christological meaning embedded in zoharic passagesas a means to
participate in the mystery of incarnation. The texts of Kemper embody,
as it were, an alternate notion of transubstantiation whereby the body
and blood of Christ are not bread and wine but parchment and ink.28
This is not to deny that Kemper avails himself of the more standard
Eucharistic symbolism.29 He is particularly fond of decoding references
in biblical, rabbinic, and zoharic sources to bread (leh. em) as denoting
the body of the Messiah (guf ha-mash. iah. ).30 My point is, however, that,
in Kempers thinking, the older symbolic identification of the body
of Christ as bread assumes a textual connotation: the secret of the
bread, which is the body, is the New Testament (berit h. adashah) that is
distributed to and consumed by the faithful.31

Sabbatianism and Kempers Christian Kabbalah

Before proceeding to the main topic of this analysis, it is necessary to
address the question of the influence of Sabbatianism on Kemper. I
must admit forthrightly that there is no precise text that substantiates
the claim for a direct impact of Sabbatianism on Kempers feminine
representations of Jesus. My methodological assumption, however, is
that the bearing of a monumental historical event on occasion can be
ascertained by the unspoken concealed in the background as much as
by the spoken revealed in the foreground.32 Moreover, as a number of
scholars have noted, there is an undeniable link between Kempers con28

The view I am attributing to Kemper has an interesting parallel to the fourteenthcentury Rhenish Dominican mystic, Henry Suso. See Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Nuns As
Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent (Berkeley: University of California Press,
), , and idem, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late
Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, ), , esp. .
29 See, for instance, Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ba.
30 Ibid., fols. a, ba, ba.
31 Beriah ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.
.
32 For an elaboration of this methodological claim, see Elliot R. Wolfson, Martyrdom, Eroticism, and Asceticism in Twelfth-Century Ashkenazi Piety, in Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. Michael Signer and John Van Engen (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, ), .

version and the heretical messianic movement.33 The individual case

of Kemper should be viewed as an exemplar of two opposing trends
that ensued in the wake of the Sabbatian movement: on the one hand,
the increased polemical exchange between Jews and Christians,34 and,
on the other hand, the apocalyptic hope for a reconciliation between
Judaism and Christianity to be realized through baptism.35 Indeed, as
Kemper himself intimates, both in the German report of his conversion as well as in the introduction to his massive Hebrew commentary on select zoharic passages (the treatise, which was composed in
, was given two titles, Matteh Mosheh and Makkel Ya #akov, reflecting
respectively the authors Jewish and Christian names), his decision to
convert was in some measure related to the disappointment that he,
like many other Jews in Poland, felt over the failed prediction by the
prophet Zadoq
of Horodna concerning the return of Sabbatai Zevi
in
.
.
36
. The disenchantment with Sabbatianism should not be viewed as
the single, or even the definitive, reason to explain Kempers enchantment with Christianity, but there can be little doubt that it served as a
catalyst as his own autobiographical recounting suggests.37 The conversion afforded Kemper an opportunity to transfer and thereby sustain
the messianic enthusiasm he discerned in kabbalistic lore, especially in
the zoharic homilies refracted through the historical prism of Sabbatian
eschatology.
33 Gershom Scholem, Studies and Texts Concerning the History of Sabbateanism and Its
Metamorphoses (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, ), note (Hebrew); Yehuda Liebes,
On Sabbateanism and Its Kabbalah: Collected Essays (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, ),
and (Hebrew); idem, A Profile of R. Naphtali Katz of Frankfort and His
Attitude Towards Shabbateanism, Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought ():
(Hebrew); Elisheva Carlebach, Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany,
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, ), .
34 Elisheva Carlebach, Sabbatianism and the Jewish-Christian Polemic, in Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division C, Vol. II: Jewish Thought and
Literature (): ; and idem, The Last Deception: Failed Messiahs and Jewish
Conversion, in Millenarianism and Messianism, .
35 Carlebach, Divided Souls, .
36 Unterthniger Bericht, ; Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. ba. Kemper refers to the former reference in the latter as his book of confession, sefer hoda"ah,
which he composed in German. On the figure of Zadoq
of Horodna, see Gershom
.
Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, ), ; Isaiah Tishby, The Report of the Redemption of R. Zadoq of Grodno in , Zion
(): (Hebrew).
37 In Beriah ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ba, Kemper recounts the
.
example of several Jewish children who sought to affirm their faith in Jesus prior to
their death, one of them dated to .

Support for my conjecture may be elicited from the following statement of Kemper in a section of the zoharic commentary called Beriah.
ha-Tikhon: The verse Through this Aaron shall enter into the shrine
[be-zo"t yavo aharon el ha-kodesh] (Lev :) also was a cause to mislead the Jews with respect to the Messiah for they took the word
be-zo"t numerically as [believing that] then Aaron, the anointed
high priest [mashiah. kohen gadol], would enter the holy of holies
but in their confusion is support for the Christians, since the Jews
themselves acknowledge that the Messiah is a high priest and this
accords with the New Testament.38 The messianic calculation to
which Kemper alludes is the widespread date of , which was
endorsed by Kabbalists from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
as the time of the eschaton based on a passage in the Zohar that
set this year as the time of the final resurrection.39 That was
a year of great massacres against the Jews in Poland only added to
the redemptive significance of this date, and it is thus not a surprise that some of the early Sabbatians linked the messianic calling
of Sabbatai Zevi
to this date.40 In another passage from the same
.
treatise, Kemper refers even more specifically to the murder of thousands of Jews in the Ukraine during /.41 While he does not
allude specifically to Sabbatian messianism tied to that date, the possibility for such an interpretation is enhanced by his further identification of the Messiah as the high priest, a theme that is implied
as well in the well-attested identification of Sabbatai Zevi
and Meta.
tron.
The messianic task that Kemper set for himself was to articulate
a religious philosophy that would simultaneously promote Christianity for Jews and Judaism for Christians. The execution of this charge
was facilitated primarily by his conviction that the secrets encoded by
the hidden language (lashon nistar) of the Zohar,42 as well as allusions
to esoteric knowledge found in other Jewish texts,43 are to be inter38

Beriah. ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.

Zohar :b.
40 Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Zevi: The Mystical Messiah, trans. R.J. Zwi Werblowsky
.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), , .
41 Beriah ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ba.
.
42 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b. See also ibid., fol. a. The inability
on the part of Jews to discern the truths about Jesus from their own mystical sources
indicates that even the wisdom of kabbalah has been lost (ibid., fol. a).
43 See, for instance, Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b, where reference
to a great secret (sod gadol) in Abraham Ibn Ezra is explicated in a Christological
39

preted as references to Jesus. To insist on a Sabbatian context to explain

Kempers actions and teachings, then, is not to deny that his agenda
fit in well with the larger cultural patterns of his time. Additionally,
the blurring of rigid theological boundaries separating the two faiths
is attested in older kabbalistic sources, including several key zoharic
passages, which undoubtedly served as the textual ground in which
Kemper anchored his spiritual hybridity. Notwithstanding the validity of both of these assertions, I think it reasonable to claim that he
was beholden primarily to a subversive hermeneutic that pushed the
halakhic tradition to its limit by narrowing the gap between transgression and piety, an orientation that resonated especially well with
the characterization of Jesus as advocating the fulfillment rather than
the destruction of the law. Kempers approach to halakhah and the
messianic dispensation accords with Sabbatian ideology, which I have
labeled hypernomian, in contrast to Scholems taxonomy antinomian, predicated on the presumption that overturning Jewish ritual
is itself a ritualistic gesture.44 Indeed, as Scholem himself observed in
one context with regard to the Sabbatians, It is by no means disobedience or apostasy which appears in this abrogation of the Torah,
but rather a changed situation in the world.45 The breaking of the
law is not an end in and of itself nor is it the means to some greater
end; it is reflective of a different ontic condition that is commensurate to an internal transformation of the spirit. Transgressing the edicts
of Torah, however, yielded the invention of new forms of ceremonial behavior appropriate to the eschatological resolution of history.46
Redemption is realized through keeping the faith, but it is a faith manifest in the piety of nonobservance. The logic of paradox, a logic that
claims the middle excluded by Aristotles excluded middle, is encapsulated in the identification of the messiah and the serpent, an idea
expressed in embryonic form in kabbalistic sources from the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, but articulated explicitly in Sabbatian sources

manner. See ibid., fol. a.

44 See Elliot R. Wolfson, Beyond Good and Evil: Hypernomianism, Transmorality,
and Kabbalistic Ethics, in Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism, ed.
William Barnard and Jeffrey J. Kripal (New York and London: Seven Bridges Press,
). , esp. , and the revised version in Elliot R. Wolfson, Venturing
Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ),
, esp. .
45 Scholem, Messianic Idea, .
46 Scholem, Major Trends, ; Wolfson, Messianism, .

through the numerical equivalence of the Hebrew terms mashiah. and

nah. ash (both equal ).47
I note, parenthetically, that Kemper employs this numerology in his
own writings.48 For example, in a passage in Me"irat Enayim, his commentary on Matthew, Kemper invokes the numerological correspondence of mashiah. and nah. ash in an attempt to establish the great mystery (sod gadol) that Jesus had the potency to overpower Satan, the
primordial serpent (nah. ash ha-kadmoni), a belief exemplified typologically
in the narrative (Exod :) about the staff of Aaron49 turning into the
serpent that swallowed the serpents of the Egyptian sorcerers as well as
the narrative (Num :) about the copper serpent (neh. ash neh. oshet),
hoisted on a staff by Moses to heal the Israelites by fiery serpents (haneh. ashim ha-seraphim).50 From Kempers standpoint, the mystery of Jesus
conquering Satan entails recognition on the part of the faithful that
Jesus and Satan are one, just as the rod of Moses could turn into a
snake, a notion facilitated by the identification of Jesus as Metatron,51
and the further depiction of the latter in zoharic sources as embodying
the polarity of good and evil.52 How more powerfully could the identity
of opposites be expressed? When this breach with Aristotelian logic is
applied to the question of ritual action, then it becomes clear that compliance to law is transgression, whereas transgression is compliance to
law. The acceptance of this paradox should militate against the opinion that Sabbatian messianism entails a definitive departure from the
nomian framework. To obliterate the halakhic world entirely would be

47 Scholem, Major Trends, ; idem, Sabbatai Zevi, , , , ; Liebes, On

.
Sabbateanism, .
48 For instance, see Karsei ha-Mishkan, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.
49 To be precise, Kemper conflates the scriptural narrative about the staff of Aaron
being changed into a serpent (Exod :) with the passages that describe the staff of
Moses being turned into a serpent (ibid., :).
50 Me"irat Enayim, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.
51 Daniel Abrams, The Boundaries of Divine Ontology: The Inclusion and Exclusion of Metatron in the Godhead, Harvard Theological Review (): ; Wolfson,
Messianism, ; Asulin, Another Glance, .
52 For discussion of some relevant passages, see Wolfson, Messianism,
note . See also Asulin, Another Glance, . In Beriah. ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala
Heb. , fol. b, Kemper writes that, in his opinion, the serpent who seduced Eve
was spiritual in nature since his form was like the form of an angel and, in
particular, he was garbed in the form of the supernal angels that are beneath the throne
of glory. Therefore, she surmised that he was divine. See, however, ibid., fol. a,
where Kemper writes that Christian sages suppose that Satan was garbed in a physical
serpent.

to erase the very context that offers one an opportunity to realize the
paradox of messianic spirituality by which one exceeds and extends the
boundary of law.53

Oral Torah as Christ Incarnate

The scriptural image of the staff of Moses provides a key to unlocking
the secret of Kempers messianic self-understanding, as may be gathered from his comment explaining the titles he had chosen for the
first part of the zoharic commentary: It is called Matteh Mosheh on
account of my previous name mosheh and Makkel Ya #akov on account of
my current name, for I struggled against the Jews and I prevailed.54
On the most basic level, as I noted above, the titles matteh mosheh, staff
of Moses (Exod : ), and makkel ya #akov, rod of Jacob (Gen :),
correspond to the authors Jewish and Christian names. An additional
factor, however, is intimated in the gloss Kemper provides on the second title, a paraphrase of the scriptural narrative in which the angel
says to Jacob Your name shall no more be called Jacob but Israel,
for you struggled with gods and people, and you prevailed (ibid.,
:). Kempers paraphrase is noteworthy as he leaves out the reference to gods (elohim) and adds Jewish (yehudim) to men (anashim),
signifying thereby that he was victorious in his battle with fellow Jews.
The nature of the struggle is elucidated in the continuation where
Kemper interprets Gods command to Moses to strike the stone in
order to bring water therefrom (Exod :) as an order to discipline
the children of Israel who stand today on bitter waters, the holy of
holies, that is, on Jesus Christ, who went before Israel in the desert to
bring forth living water for them.55 The rejection of Jesus on the part
of the Jews turned the living water into bitter waters, but Kemper is
charged with the mission of Moses to strike the hard rock to extract
water, which he understands as the task of converting Jews, rendered
in the archaic idiom lekayyem nefashot me-yisra"el, by demonstrating the
truths of Christianity through heeding the obligation to come and to
53

See references above, note .

Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , title page. Compare Me"irat Enayim, MS
Uppsala Heb. , fol. a, where Kemper, who is designated by the titles rav and rabbi,
is also described as one who returned to the faith in the Messiah (ba #al teshuvah el
emunat ha-mashiah. ). See ibid., fol. a, and Leket he-Ani, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.
55 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.
54

enter into the chamber of chambers of the treatises of the ancient tradition [lavo we-likkanes be-h. adrei h. adarim be-sifrei kabbalah ha-yeshenah], which
is Sefer ha-Zohar, the most ancient of all books that are found today
amongst the community of Jews, who desire to be called by the name
assembly of Israel [keneset yisra"el].56 Kemper, no doubt, believed that
his Christian faith demanded that he provide the mystical justification
for Jews to recognize not only the validity of Christianity but to discern
that the roots for Christianity spring from the soil of Judaism, especially the garden of kabbalistic mysteries. Indeed, as Kemper argues,
the protracted exile for the Jewish people must be understood primarily as a pneumatic condition related to the fact that Satan closed the
opening to faith for them. Redemption from the diasporic state, therefore, consists of unlocking the gate that has been bolted so that Jews
will acknowledge the messianic standing of Jesus.57 Kemper doubtlessly
deemed the worth of his own existence in terms of this mission. His
gathering passages from the zoharic corpus that disclose the Judaic
basis for Christianity, therefore, has the same salvific power accorded
the rod of Moses, which could transform water from bitter to sweet, a
power that could facilitate the return of errant Jews who opposed Jesus
and his teaching. The fulfillment of this duty binds Kemper directly to
Moses, the first redeemer (go"el ri"shon) or the corporeal redeemer
(go"el gufani), the typological paradigm for Jesus, the final redeemer
(go"el ah. aron) or the spiritual redeemer (go"el ruh. ani).58 The centrality
of this exegetical pattern, which is reminiscent of the connection made
between Moses and Sabbatai Zevi
in Sabbatian texts,59 can be seen
.
in Kempers assertion that the angel of the Lord (mal"akh yhwh) that
appeared to Moses in the epiphany of the burning bush (Exod :)
was Jesus, the redeemer who was first and last (zeh ha-go"el ri"shon weah. aron).60 According to this text, it is not merely the symmetry between
Moses and Jesus that is vital,61 but that the latter, in virtue of his angelic
glory, was both the first and last redeemer, bringing about the physical
and spiritual liberation.
56

Ibid., fol. b.
Ibid., fols. ab.
58 See Beriah ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. b, a.
.
59 For references, see Wolfson, Messianism, note .
60 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b. See ibid., fol. b.
61 On occasion Kemper also notes the asymmetry between Moses and Jesus, and, in
fact the superiority of the latter vis--vis the former. See, for instance, Matteh Mosheh,
MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.
57

To treat the messianic pairing of Jesus and Moses in Kempers

thought adequately would require a separate analysis. I will here cite
and analyze one passage from Matteh Mosheh in order to adduce the
main points of this affinity. The zoharic passage that Kemper explicates
reads as follows:
And the spirit of God (Gen :), this is the spirit of the Messiah.62
Immediately, he was hovering on the face of the waters of Torah, and
immediately there was redemption, as it said, And God said, Let there
be light (ibid., ). So the Lord God banished him (ibid., :), from
the hand of the Messiah who was in the Garden of Eden. And why?
To till the soil (ibid.), which is the Shekhinah. And stationed east of
the Garden of Eden the cherubim (ibid., ), these are the Messiah son
of David and the Messiah son of Joseph, for he drew forth the spirit of
Messiah [de-mashkha ruh. a di-meshih. a] concerning whom it is said and the
spirit of God, and this is Shiloh about whom it is said I will emanate
the spirit (Num :), for shiloh is numerically equal to mosheh. And
stationed east [wa-yashken mi-kedem], for he placed Shiloh before [deakdim] both of them, so that he would be hovering over the face of Torah
and the redemption would be dependent on him.63

This zoharic text, according to Kemper, proves clearly that the Messiah is divine [elohim] because he is comprised in the expression spirit
of God [ruah. elohim], and this Messiah will be the redeemer [go"el].64
We are told, moreover, that the redemption is spiritual (ruh. anit) and
not physical (gufanit),65 a point that Kemper contends was recognized
by the Jews themselves, for instance, in the midrashic interpretation
of the light mentioned in Genesis : as a reference to the luminosity stored away for the righteous in the eschatological future.66 Commenting on the zoharic authors assertion that the two cherubim mentioned in Genesis : can be decoded symbolically as alluding to the
two messianic figures, the Messiah son of David and the Messiah son
of Joseph, Kemper avers that our Messiah is the son of David, but
he also is called the son of Joseph, and he is the way to the Tree
62 The zoharic exegesis is based on earlier aggadic sources, for instance, Genesis
Rabbah :, ed. Julius Theodor and Chanoch Albeck (Jerusalem: Wahrmann Books,
), .
63 Zohar :a (Hashmatot). In the Lublin edition, the reference is to the section on
Genesis, .
64 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.
65 On the distinction between the spiritual redemption (ge"ullah ruhanit) and physical
.
redemption (ge"ullah gufanit), see Beriah. ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.
66 Genesis Rabbah :, .

of Life (Gen :), as it says in the New Testament.67 Kemper was

critical of the Pharisaic tradition (kabbalah) that there are two distinct
saviors, asserting instead that Jesus could be depicted as both the Messiah of David and the Messiah of Joseph.68 To ascertain the identification of the two messiahs as the cherubim, one must recall the opinion transmitted in the name of R. Qatina that the cherubim were
male and female.69 The twofold messianic doctrine, therefore, reflects
the assumption regarding the androgynous unity of the Godhead. If
we assume, as I think we should, that Kemper had this idea in mind,
then it can be argued plausibly that his description of Jesus is parallel
to the belief proffered by some Sabbatians that Sabbatai Zevi
was an
.
amalgam of both messianic figures and hence he personified the divine
androgyne in his own being.70 Further support for this suggestion may
be gathered from the continuation of the zoharic text where Moses is
identified with Shiloh based on the fact that both names numerically
equal .71 Insofar as the name Shiloh (based on its usage in Gen
:) assumes messianic significance, we can surmise that Moses, too,
is accorded such a role. This is the import of the zoharic claim that he
drew forth the spirit of Messiah (de-mashkha ruh. a di-meshih. a). Tellingly,
Kemper glosses the passage, He drew forth the spirit of Messiah,
that is, the Messiah was garbed in a body of skin and flesh, and this is
the one called Shiloh, and it is easy to understand.72 Notwithstanding
Kempers aside that this matter is easy to understand, the passage
is dense. Ostensibly, there is a shift from Moses to Jesus, as the name
Shiloh, which is a nickname for Moses, is applied to the incarnate
form of Christ. In Kempers scheme, Moses typologically foreshadows
Jesus, and just as Moses exemplifies the divine agency configured in the

67 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a. I assume that the reference to

the New Testament is to the apocalyptic Tree of Life mentioned in Revelation :,
:. For a useful survey, consider Robert Starke, The Tree of Life: Protological
to Eschatological, available at http://www.kerux.com/documents/ KeruxVNA.
asp.
68 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ba, ab; Me"irat Enayim, MS
Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.
69 Babylonian Talmud, Yoma a; Baba Batra a.
70 Elliot R. Wolfson, Engenderment of Messianic Politics, ; and idem,
Constructions, .
71 On this numerical equivalence, see also Zohar :b. Based on the zoharic
passages, this numerology appears in many later kabbalistic works.
72 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.

form of an anthropos, an idea enhanced by the fact that the letters of

the name mosheh can be transposed into the word ha-shem, the name,73
which alludes to the Tetragrammaton whose numerical value is fortyfive (yod + he + waw + he = [ + + ] + [ + ] + [ + + ] + [ + ]), the
same value of the word adam (alef + dalet + mem = + + ),74 so Jesus
is the potency of God adorned in the corporeal body. As Kemper
puts it in one context in Matteh Mosheh, the letters of mosheh are a
transposition of ha-shem, and the shin of mosheh is also the first letter
of the word shem, and what remains [in the word mosheh] is mah,
that is [the letters] mem he, which is the numerical value of adam, the
fourth in the throne of the chariot, which consists of three creatures
and the human who is the fourth, and all of them gaze upon him.75
The fourth visage contemplated by Ezekiel is the human image, which
complements the three angelic beasts, the ox, the eagle, and the lion.
According to Kemper, the human form is to be identified with Moses,
as the latter bears the name (mosheh = ha-shem), and the name is
YHWH, the numerical value of the words mah (mem he = + ) and
adam (alef, dalet, mem = + + ). We may infer that Kemper tacitly
assumed that remarks about Moses culled from zoharic homilies can
be transferred easily to Jesus. It is plausible to presume, moreover, that
Kemper saw himself as the bridge that connects the two redeemers and
thus he believed he was in the unique position to complete the spiritual
redemption (ge"ullah ruh. anit) inaugurated by Jesus as the consummation
of the corporeal redemption (ge"ullah gufanit) initiated by Moses.76 The
former is surely higher than the latter, but the latter is indispensable to
attain the former. The body is not to be discarded but liberated through
the spirit of God that is embodied in the redeemer.
73 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ba. The decoding of the name
mosheh as ha-shem, and the further claim that Moses is typologically related to Jesus, is
repeated in Beriah. ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.
74 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ba. In that context, not only are
the letters of mosheh transposed into ha-shem, but the word itself is broken down into
its three constituent letters, shin, mem, and he, the first stands metonymically for the
word shem, that is name, and the remaining mem and he are an encoded reference
to the Tetragrammaton, since the numerical value of the latter is forty-five (mem + he =
+ ), which is also the numerical value of adam (alef + dalet + mem = + + ). Moses,
consequently, is identified as the fourth beast in Ezekiels chariot, which had the face
of a human. If we further apply the zoharic interpretation, then we can conclude that
the fourth beast should be identified as the Shekhinah, and hence Moses, like Jesus,
symbolically embodies the divine presence.
75 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ba.
76 Beriah ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b. See ibid., fol. b.
.

In another passage in Matteh Mosheh, Kemper develops this symbolic

nexus in conjunction with a passage from the author of Tikkunei Zohar,
And the Lord showed him a tree (Exod :), this is the Tree of Life,
and by means of it the water became sweet (ibid.), and this is Moses,
the anointed one [mashiah. ], concerning whom it is said the rod of God
is in my hand (ibid., :). The rod refers to Metatron, who is from
the side of life and from the side of death. Thus he turns into a rod
if he is an assistant [ezer] from the good side, but he turns into a serpent if he is in opposition to him [kenegdo].77 Commenting on this text,
Kemper writes: Jesus is the Tree of Life, and he is sweetened water to
the one who has faith in him, and the rod of indignation to the one
who denies him, for then he turns into the serpent, as he did before
Pharaoh, as he was from the sect of unbelievers.78 Kempers interpretation of the zoharic passage leads him to identify Jesus and the serpent,
which may be an echo of the aforementioned Sabbatian identification
of mashiah. and nah. ash, a possibility that is enhanced by the depiction
of the savior as the Tree of Life that imparts blessing and comfort to
all who cleave to it, spiritual sustenance that is expressed not in ritual obedience to the Pentateuch of Moses, the Written Torah, literally
the Torah of letters (torah shel otiyyot), but in the declaration of faith,
which is the Torah of the Tree of Life, the teaching of the Gospel
(torat even gillayon), the messianic Torah (torat ha-mashiah. ), the just Oral
Torah (torah she-be-al peh ha-yesherah), the Word of God instantiated in
the figure of Jesus.79 The textual body suggested by the Prologue to
John is here broadened to the Gospels more generally as they embody
the dicta of Jesus. The measure of corporeality is thus displaced from
the literal body, that is, the body made up of graphemes, or, in rabbinic
nomenclature, the Written Torah, the Torah of letters, the Old Testament (berit yeshenah), to the verbal body, that is, the body that is made
up of phonemes, the ipsissima verba, the teaching of the Gospel that
was actually spoken by Christ, which is identified further as the just
Oral Torah, the New Testament (berit h. adashah).80 One cannot fail to
note the irony herethe apostate Kabbalist recasts the most distinctive
symbol of rabbinic culture, the Oral Torah, in a Christological mold:
the dicta of Jesus, rather than the legalistic and folkloristic sayings of
77
78
79
80

Zohar :a.
Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.
See above, note .
Beriah. ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.

the talmudic sages, constitute the Oral Torah in its most precise sense.
More importantly for this particular analysis, the composition of bodiliness is directly related to this alternate conception of textuality. I hasten
to add, however, that just as, rabbinically, the distinction between oral
and written should not be treated in a dichotomous mannerthe Oral
Torah is itself written and the Written Torah must be read orallyso
for Kemper, we must be on guard against rigidly bifurcating the two.
Jesus is the Oral Torah, but he is also the embodiment of the inscripted
text of Scripture when the latter is understood in its kabbalistic sense as
being the name that is the Word. Commenting on a zoharic description of the Messiah as one who is sustained by the Written Torah
and Oral Torah, which are symbolized by milk and wine, that is, the
attributes of mercy and judgment,81 Kemper notes that the supernal
Logos (ma"amar ila"ah) comprises both kinds of Torah central to rabbinic lore, but the Oral Torah consists of the effort to understand the
new instruction [ha-torah h. adashah], that is, the proclamation of Jesus
[keri"at yeshu #a], which he uttered through the holy mouth, and he gladdened the heart of those who heeded him in perfect faith.82 Insofar as
the Logos contains both the Written Torah and Oral Torah, and the
latter is identified more specifically as the interpretative explications of
the formerthe new Torah83that issue directly from the mouth of
Jesus, there is no basis to bifurcate sharply between the logocentric and
grammatological. The Logos is not merely a text that is performatively
spoken in contrast to one that is written; it is rather, positioned between
and thus it is spoken as written, and written as spoken. The word of
Jesus declaimed phonologically is the voice of God inscripted orthographically. In the simpler terms that Kemper employs, Jesus is called
the finger of God on account of the fact that he writes on the tablet of
peoples hearts and instructs them in the way.84

81
82
83
84

b.

Zohar :a (Lublin edition, ).

Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.
Ibid., fol. a.
Ibid., fol. b. On the inscribing of matters on the tablet of the heart, see ibid.,

Jesus as Shekhinah
Perhaps one of the more innovative ways that Kemper expressed the
reinscription of the body is in terms of the identification of Jesus and
Shekhinah. To appreciate the originality of this approach, it would be
beneficial to review some of the basic tenets associated with Shekhinah in the symbolism of zoharic Kabbalah, as the latter served as the
basis for Kempers own blend of Jewish esotericism and Christian piety.
Shekhinah, the rabbinic term for the indwelling of Gods presence in
the world, is the designation of the last of the ten sefirot, the luminous emanations that collectively make up the pleroma of the divine. A
plethora of symbols are associated with Shekhinah, but for the purposes
of this analysis I would like to focus on the two-faced characterization
of Shekhinah, which is expressive of an ontological principle affirmed
by practitioners of the occult wisdom from the inception of Kabbalah
as a literary-historical phenomenon: The divine configuration, both in
its totality and in each of its constituent elements, displays the quality
of androgyny: masculinity is aligned with mercy, the act of bestowing,
and femininity with judgment, the act of constricting. Although it is
commonly believed that Shekhinah is singularly associated with feminine
images, sometimes even portrayed by scholarly enthusiasts and enthusiastic scholars alike as the kabbalistic analogue to the mythical goddess
or great mother, in fact, this gradation is no exception to the rule I
articulated; on the contrary, Shekhinah is emblematic of the androcentric conception of androgyny that informs the traditional Kabbalah.
Hence, in relation to the upper nine sefirot, Shekhinah is engendered as
feminine, as its function is to receive the overflow by way of the phallic Yesod, but, in relation to the realms of being outside the world of
emanation, Shekhinah is engendered as masculine, as its function is to
sustain existence below by channeling the overflow of blessings from
above. The point is illustrated in a poignant way in a zoharic passage
where the image of the redeeming angel, ha-mal"akh ha-go"el (Gen :),
is applied to Shekhinah, the angel that is sometimes male and sometimes female. When it bestows blessings on the world, it is male, and it
is called male, like a male that bestows blessings on a female, but when
it stands in judgment on the world, then it is called female like a female
that is pregnant.85 In the execution of judgment, Shekhinah restrains

85

Zohar :a.

the effluence pouring forth from above and she is thus compared to a
pregnant woman that holds the fetus within the womb where gestation
takes place. By contrast, in disseminating blessing to the worlds below,
Shekhinah assumes a masculine persona, for she is like the man that fills
the woman with seminal discharge.86
With this brief introduction, we can turn our attention back to Kemper. The first striking thing to note is Kempers repeated identification of Jesus with Shekhinah or with terms and/or images that are often
associated with this potency. The basic assumption undergirding this
equation is summed up in the following remark in Matteh Mosheh: The
Messiah and Shekhinah are one thing, that is, the efflux [ha-shefa] that
was in the earth prior to the incarnation of Jesus [hitgashmut yeshu#a],
which went with them in the desert, was called Shekhinah, but when he
was embodied and became human, then he was called Messiah, the
central pillar, the Son of the King, and the like.87 Secondly, in many
of the relevant passages, the association of Jesus and Shekhinah is related
to the question of androgyny. For instance, in Beriah. ha-Tikhon, Kemper
writes that all those who believe in Jesus are called Israel [yisra"el], the
just ones [ha-yesharim] who believe and have faith in the just God [el
yashar], and he brought these ones out from the iron furnace, the side
of impurity, and they ascended to the Son, which is the Shekhinah. This
is alluded to in the commandments of circumcision and the paschal
sacrifice.88 The reference to these commandments indicates that the
symbolic meaning of both biblical rites is that they are means to cleave
to the name of God, which is identified with Jesus.89 At play as well in
Kempers view is the rabbinic emphasis, based partially on some allusions in Scripture, on the sacrificial nature of circumcision. Both ritual
acts point to Jesus, for, in his embodied state, he is the sacrifice of the
entire world (ki yeshu #a hayah korban kol ha-olam)90 as well as the sign of
the holy inscription (ot reshima kaddisha).91 The blood of circumcision
(dam milah) and the blood of the paschal sacrifice (dam pesah. ) coalesce
in the figure of Jesus, two forms of the blood of the covenant (dam
berit) that are enacted symbolically in the four cups of red wine that
Jews must drink at the Passover seder, the feast that commemorates
86
87
88
89
90
91

For a more extensive discussion, see Wolfson, Language, .

Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.
Beriah. ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.
Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ba.
Me"irat Enayyim, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.
Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.

the past redemption of Egypt and anticipates in this narrative retelling

the future redemption.92 Instead of viewing Jewish ritual negatively as
embracing the corporeal and eschewing the spiritual, Kemper discerns
the inner, symbolic intent of the ceremonial actions. To be sure, Kemper accepts the Pauline argument regarding justification by faith rather
than by works, and hence he is critical of the rabbis (designated ba #alei
talmud) for thinking that they could acquire the world-to-come solely
through good actions and not by believing in the messianic calling of
Jesus.93 Kempers approach, however, is more complex, since he looks
upon Jesus as the concretization of the law, and, in that respect, the
path beyond the law of the body is through the body of the law. As has
often been the case in the long history of Jewish-Christian disputations,
the particular example of circumcision illustrates the general point of
discord. Following Paul and countless other Christian writers, Kemper
maintains that circumcision of the flesh is replaced by circumcision of
the heart, but he also insists that the original intent of the former, which
is still operative for Jews, the people of the body that is the book, precludes any such bifurcation. As I noted above, Kemper even goes so
far as to say that by means of the physical circumcision the sign, which
is Christ, is inscribed on the male Jewish body, and as a consequence,
the old man is removed and the new man put on (Ephesians :
). There is no reason to assume that Kemper would have thought
that circumcision of the flesh had lost its spiritual meaning for the body
politic of Israel. The Jewish rite, moreover, imparts to Gentile Christians as well the knowledge that the bodily circumcision of Jesus is not
a trivial matter, as it is only in virtue of his having been circumcised
in the flesh that he can become the sign of the covenant (ot berit) to
transform the phallus (milah) into the mouth (peh) that is the signifier of
divinity (elohim).94 In Avodat ha-Kodesh, Kemper writes explicitly that the
term Shekhinah is a generic noun (shem kollel) as it applies to the Father,
for he has produced a Son whom he has circumcised on the eighth
day because Jesus is a branch from the Tree of Life.95 The term shekhinah is one of the names of Jesus, but it can be expanded to denote the
92

Ibid., fols. ba.

See, for instance, Avodat ha-Kodesh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ab.
94 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b. To understand the chain of
associations made by Kemper, one must bear in mind that both milah and peh equal
, and elohim is , the previous sum of plus an extra one for the word itself, a
common numerological technique.
95 Avodat ha-Kodesh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.
93

Father, inasmuch as the latter engenders the former. The crucial point
is that Kemper deviates from the traditional kabbalistic symbolism by
applying this key symbol to the masculine hypostases.
In another passage from Beriah. ha-Tikhon, Kemper elaborates on the
identification of Jesus as Shekhinah by commenting on the zoharic passage from the Ra #aya Meheimna stratum where Shekhinah is designated the
sign of the covenant (ot berit) from the side of Yesod.96 Kemper similarly notes in that context that the term Shekhinah is a shem kollel that is
attributed to Jesus, for he dwells with and amidst humanity (shokhen
bein u-vetokh benei adam). At the same time, however, Jesus is also identified as the righteous one who is the foundation of the world (zaddik
.
yesod olam), for he is the foundation stone, the principle and the foundation, first and last.97 Insofar as Jesus is identified as the covenantberit
kodesh or berit shalom98and the covenant, according to the kabbalistic understanding, is androgynous, it follows that Jesus must bear this
quality. This is the import of Kempers observation that Jesus is both
Yesod, the phallic foundation, and Shekhinah, the indwelling presence.
The association of Jesus and Shekhinah is enhanced by the attribution
of other standard symbols of the latter culled from zoharic literature to
the former, to wit, kingship (malkhut) or heavenly kingship (malkhut
shamayim),99 angel of the presence (mal"akh ha-panim),100 or archon of
the presence (sar ha-panim), also identified as Metatron,101 angel of
the covenant (mal"akh ha-berit),102 redeeming angel (mal"akh ha-go"el),103
ark of the covenant, Lord of all the earth (aron ha-berit adon kol ha104
arez),
the bread of affliction (leh. em oni),105 wisdom (h. okhmah),106
.
96

Zohar :a.
Beriah. ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.
98 Ibid., fol. b.
99 Ibid., fol. a; Me"irat Enayim, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. a, b, b, a.
100 Me"irat Enayim, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. b, a, a.
101 Ibid., fols. ba, b, b.
102 Ibid., fol. ab, a.
103 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a. On the identification of Jesus as the
angel of God (as described especially in Exod :, the verses whence the letter
name is derived), see Avodat ha-Kodesh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ba.
104 Beriah ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b, based on Josh :.
.
105 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.
106 Karsei ha-Mishkan, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a. In some passages, the sophianic
nature of Jesus is related to the second of the emanations rather than with the
tenth. See, for example, Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b. And ibid.,
fol. b: The Messiah is called Hokhmah
in the ten sefirot, and to him alone belongs
.
the kingship. In line with this symbolic nuance, Jesus is on occasion designated by
97

Matrona (matronita),107 orchard of holy apples (h. akal tapuh. in kaddishin),108 opening (petah. ), or the opening of the tent (petah. ha-ohel),109
and the curtain (parokhet) or veil (yeri #ah) through which one must go to
enter before the holy of holies.110

Jesus as Mother
In addition to the identification of Jesus and Shekhinah, there is another
aspect of Kempers portrayal of Jesus that reflects an interesting appropriation and transformation of a standard zoharic symbol. I am referring to the ascription of the image of mother to Jesus.111 The matter
may be illumined from a passage in the introduction to Matteh Mosheh.
Kemper begins the discussion by mentioning the zoharic idea that the
four letters of the name YHWH correspond respectively to the quaternity of the divine persona, Father (Hokhmah),
Mother (Binah), Son
.
(Tiferet), and Daughter (Malkhut). Kemper insists, however, that there is
a hidden secret (sod nistar) in the passage of the Zohar.112 In the continuation, we learn that the secret of the secret entails the Christological
interpretation:
The Father refers to God the Father, the first gradation, the one to
whom they pray in the morning prayers Our Father in heaven [avinu
she-ba-shamayim] the Mother refers certainly to the Son. Why is he
called in the name of the mother? On account of the supernal Wisdom
[h. okhmah ila"ah] in the ten sefirot, which is the second of the sefirot, and
also on account of the fact that he produced [holid] everything that
was created in the heavens above and upon the earth below (Deut
:), for through him were they created, as in the [rendering of]
Targum Yerushalmi [on the word bere"shit] by wisdom [be-h. ukhma] and
[Targum] Jonathan referred to him several times as the saying of the
Lord [memra de-yhwh], and concerning him John said In the beginning
was the word (John :) Do not be concerned that the Holy Spirit
is also called on occasion mother because for the most part the
the zoharic locution h. okhmah ila"ah, the supernal wisdom. See Beriah. ha-Tikhon, MS
Uppsala Heb. , fols. a, a.
107 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a; Beriah ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb.
.
, fols. ab.
108 Beriah ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.
.
109 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ba.
110 Ibid., fols. ba, a.
111 Wolfson, Messianism, . Some of the material analyzed there is repeated
here.
112 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ba.

.
name mother applies to the Son. Moreover, son and daughter are
said with respect to that supernal gradation. He is called son when
he sits to the right of his Father, [The Lord has established His throne
in heaven] and His sovereign rule is over all (Ps. :), and before
him every knee will bend down (Isa :). Then he is the son who
inherits the property of his father. And do not wonder that he is
contained in the names of both Mother and Son, for in the ten sefirot
he is also contained in the right and left sides, Hokhmah
to the right and
.
Binah to the left. He is called daughter when he descends to earth,
humbled and riding on an ass (Zech :)113 and then his power is
weakened like a female, and on account of this aspect he assumes the
name daughter. And he is also called daughter on account of
all the glory of the princess is inward (Ps. :), for all his glory was
by way of the inner and spiritual and not by the external, for externally
he appeared to others like one of them. His glory was inward for he
is the Father and he is in the Father. For that reason he is also called
Ze#eir Anpin, for he diminished and lowered himself to endure suffering
on account of humankind, to atone for their sins.114

The configurations (parzufim)

of the zoharic quaternity are reduced to
.
two, viz., the Father and Son, as Mother and Daughter are treated
as variant manifestations of the latter. The Son is called Mother on
account of his demiurgical capacity, which is related exegetically to
both the ancient wisdom tradition about the memra preserved in the
Aramaic Targumim and the doctrine of the Logos promulgated in the
prologue to John.115 I note something of a discrepancy here with the
zoharic symbolism according to which Hokhmah,
the second emana.
tion, is represented figuratively as the Father and Binah, the third emanation, as the Mother. There is some slippage in Kempers account,
for he affixes the maternal images to either the Holy Spirit116and in
this regard there is affinity between Kemper, the Christian Kabbalah
of Postel, and the Moravian teaching of Zinzendorfor to Jesus on
account of his identification with Binah. Hence his remark that with
respect to the sefirot Jesus is also contained in the right and left sides,
Hokhmah
to the right and Binah to the left, correlated respectively
.
with the Son and Mother. Kemper is not consistent, however, for in
some passages he associates the hypostasis of the Son with either the
supernal Hokhmah,
the second emanation,117 or with both it and the
.
113
114
115
116
117

Compare Beriah. ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.

Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ab.
Beriah. ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. b, b, ba.
Beriah. ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.
See above, note .

lower Hokhmah,
the tenth emanation. For example, in Matteh Mosheh,
.
he writes: This Messiah is Hokhmah,
the second gradation of the ten
.
sefirot. And the spirit of the Lord rests upon him (Isa :), on
this lower opening [pith. a tata"ah], that is, the Messiah.118 For the most
part, however, Kemper deviates from the standard symbolism attested
in zoharic and other kabbalistic literature. Thus, in another passage
in Matteh Mosheh, the Trinity is described as consisting of Hokhmah,
the
.
Father, Binah, the Son (based on decoding the word as ben yah,119 the
son of yod he, the letters that signify Hokhmah
and Binah), and the Holy
.
Spirit is the vapor that comes out from their combination and overflows to the prophets.120 In short, the zoharic idea of the heterosexual union of Father and Mother, Hokhmah
and Binah, is transformed in
.
Kempers mind into the homoerotic (though, apparently, asexual) union
of Father and Son. I note, parenthetically, that a similar explanation
can be applied to the way Kemper appropriates the formula used by
Kabbalists, le-shem yih. ud kudsha berikh hu u-shekhinteih, For the sake of the
unification of the holy One, blessed be He, and his Shekhinah.121 In the
conventional understanding, the words are uttered to unify the masculine and feminine dimensions of the divine, Tiferet and Malkhut, the
King and the Matrona. However, since for Kemper the Shekhinah refers
to Jesus, the intent of the liturgical saying is to unify Father and Son,
and thus we can speak of a homoerotic reframing of the heterosexual
imagery.122
The designation son denotes the exalted rank of Jesus as synthronos,
a term used to mark the function of Jesus occupying a throne to the
right of the Father.123 By contrast, the designation daughter relates to
the mystery of the incarnation, the humbling of Jesus when he takes on

118

Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.

Avodat ha-Kodesh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.
120 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.
121 Ibid., fol. b.
122 By contrast, the heteroerotic symbolism seems to be preserved in the depiction of
the Church as the bride (derived from Song of Songs) in relation to Jesus, obviously, a
much older exegetical strategy in the history of Christian spirituality (for references to
scholarly discussions, see Wolfson, Language, note ). See also Matteh Mosheh, MS
Uppsala Heb. , fol. a. On the explicit characterization of Jesus as the Solomon of
the Song, the king to whom peace belongs, see ibid., fol. b, and Beriah. ha-Tikhon,
MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.
123 Ibid., b, a, a, a, a, a, b, b; Beriah ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala
.
Heb. , fol. a.
119

the form of the material world, when he is weakened like a female,124

and, as a consequence, all the glory of the divine is internalized
and concentrated into a single point,125 which is designated by the
rabbinic locution bat kol, literally, daughter of the voice.126 I note,
parenthetically, that during my visit to Uppsala University, I examined
the Zohar that Kemper used when he wrote his various commentaries,127
and much to my surprise, when I opened up the volume I found
written on the inside cover opposite the title page his power was
weakened like a female (tashash koh. o ki-nekevah), followed by a directive
to look at the zoharic section on Beha #alotkha in the book of Numbers.128
Comparing the passages that were marked and annotated therein with
the citations explicated by Kemper in his various works, I came to the
conclusion that this comment was likely written by his own hand. If
this supposition is correct, then we must marvel at the fact that of all
possible comments, Kemper chose this one to inscribe as an epigraph
in the Zohar from which he studied and that served as the foundation
for his own exegetical excursions. As I have already indicated, the
remark his power was weakened like a female is a signpost to the
mystery of incarnation, and thus I would go so far as to hypothesize
that this inscription suggests that Kemper thought of the Zohar as the
textual instantiation of Christs having humbled himself by donning the
garment of corruptible flesh. In support of this conjecture, I note that
in one place Kemper describes the Zohar as a book that was amassed
from manuscripts (which were found from the mouth) of Rabbi Simeon
129
This language closely resembles his understanding of the
ben Yohai.
.
Gospels as the written anthology of the oral teachings of Jesus, which
I have discussed above. Be that as it may, the reference made to the
124

Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.

Reading the zoharic symbolism closely, Kemper describes both the supernal
Wisdom, the second sefirah, and the lower Wisdom, the tenth sefirah, as points. For him,
these refer respectively to Father and Son. See Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. ,
fol. a.
126 Ibid., fol. a.
127 Uppsala Universitets-Bibliotek obr. :. In the introduction to Matteh Mosheh,
MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ab, Kemper mentions a handwritten noted placed in
the margin of the Zohar found in the Uppsala Library. The pagination corresponds
to the Lublin edition, and I have little doubt that the copy of the Lublin Zohar that
I examined at the library in Uppsala is the one used by Kemper. Mention of Jewish
mystical texts that Kemper examined at the library in Uppsala is also found in Beriah.
ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.
128 Zohar :a (Lublin edition, ).
129 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b.
125

passage from the zoharic portion in Numbers is relevant as it contains

the statement I was considered to be a female, which is placed in
the mouth of Moses. Again, we see the analogy that Kemper draws
between Moses and Jesus, the redemptive power of both being aligned
with the act of degradation that is rendered in gender terms as the
powerful male being weakened like a female. The pietistic ideal that
emerges from this transformation is for the male to become female,
even if we readily acknowledge that the contours of femininity implied
thereby reinforce the patriarchical hierarchy.
The weakened state justifies the metaphorical application of the term
daughter to Jesus and it is also captured in the technical zoharic
expression Ze #eir Anpin, which literally means the small face, set in
contrast to Arikh Anpin, literally, the long face, and metaphorically,
the long-suffering one.130 Elsewhere Kemper assigns the title Ze #eir
Anpin to Metatron, the angelic name of Jesus, on account of the fact
that he diminished himself.131 This act of diminution accounts for
the attribution of the title lesser wisdom, h. okhmah ze #ira, to Jesus, a
locution that situates Kempers thinking in the trajectory of Sophianic
Christology that can be traced back to Late Antiquity.132 The theme
is elaborated in Karsei ha-Mishkan, the third part of Kempers zoharic
commentary, in an interpretation of the distinction between the two
forms of Israel found in Zohar :a: The elder Israel [yisra"el sabba] is
the Father, the Ancient of Ancients, and the younger [zuta] is the Son,
Ze #eir Anpin, for he diminished himself [hiz #ir et azmo]
and descended to
.
the earth, and he is the youthful [na #ar] Metatron.133 This identification
stems from the fact that in the kabbalistic texts themselves Metatron is
characterized both as the glory of God and as the highest angel. This
dual role is appropriated by Kemper to express an ancient Christian

130

Kemper also attributes the zoharic expression Atika, which is a synonym for Arikh
Anpin, to the Father. See Beriah. ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. b. In Matteh
Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a, the zoharic expression head of the Infinite
(resha de-ein sof ) is applied to the Father, and the spirit (ruah. ) that comes out from there
to the Son. The expression Atik Yomin (based on Dan :, ) is attributed to the Father
in ibid., fol. a.
131 Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a; Beriah ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb.
.
, fol. a.
132 Beriah ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.
.
133 Karsei ha-Mishkan, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a. On Jesus diminishing his power,
see also Me"irat Enayim, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a; Beriah. ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala
Heb. , fol. b.

belief regarding the angelmorphic Jesus and the hypostatized name.134

From the Christological vantage point this implies that the glory is
embodied in the form of an angel that is manifest in the world. The
technical designation of God as Ze #eir Anpin, therefore, is another way
of conveying the belief in Jesus humbling himself by assuming the
corruptible form of a physical body. In the act of debasement, however,
lies the secret of angelification, the mystery of the immaterial donning
the garment of the material, of the male becoming female.
Kemper interprets the zoharic passage regarding the augmentation
in the supernal world of the one who diminishes himself in this world135
as a reference to the mystery of kenosis by means of which Jesus lowers
himself into the material world, culminating in his being bound to the
cross.136 Interestingly, Kemper associates the words attributed to the
head of the academy in the aforementioned zoharic text, the one
who is small is great, and the one who is great is small,137 with the
words ascribed to Jesus, whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and
whoever humbles himself will be exalted (Matt :).138 The pietistic
virtue of humility is thus tied to the incarnational theology, an idea
that can be traced to Phil :. For Kemper, moreover, this mystery
entails the feminine transposition of Jesus, which is signified by the
technical term ze #eir anpin, briefly discussed above. In recent years it has
been suggested that this symbol in some kabbalistic sources from the
period of the Zohar (late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries) was
a technical designation of the Shekhinah in her feminine comportment.139
Curiously, it appears that Kempers Christological orientation led him
to recover what may have been the original intent of this symbolic
134 Jarl E. Fossum, The Name of God and the Angel of the Lord: Samaritan and Jewish Concepts
of Intermediation and the Origin of Gnosticism (Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr, ); Margaret
Barker, The Great Angel: A Study of Israels Second God (London: SPCK, ); idem,
The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy (London and New York: T
& T Clark, ), ; Charles A. Gieschen, Angelmorphic Christology: Antecedents
and Early Evidence (Leiden: Brill, ). It seems to me that the influence of Kemper
can be detected in the discussion on the angelic nature of the divine Presence in the
dissertation on the Shekhinah written in Uppsala University by Gabriel N. Mathesius
(), .
135 Zohar :b.
136 Beriah ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fol. a.
.
137 See also Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. aa, b.
138 See my discussion in Venturing Beyond, .
139 Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, ),
and ; Yehuda Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, trans. Arnold Schwartz, Stephanie
Nakache, and Penina Peli (Albany: State University of New York Press, ), .

locution. In another context, Kemper explains this secret by reflecting

on a distinction in Zohar between the name Israel, which signifies the
head and the masculine, and the name Jacob, which signifies the heel
and the feminine.140 According to Kemper, both names refer to Jesus,
the former to his elevated status as the Son seated to the right of the
Father, and the latter to his diminished status as a human being in this
world, which is depicted by the image of the daughter. As Kemper is
quick to point out, the feminine depiction of Jesus does not mean that
he was anatomically female, but it suggests that from the perspective of
the hierarchy of gender values (relative to a specific cultural context) in
his weakened state he can be referred to as female.141
In Beriah. ha-Tikhon, Kemper links the fact that Jesus is both son and
mother to the passage from Zohar mentioned above where Shekhinah is
described as both male and female.142 It would seem that, in this context, as we find in several other passages, the symbol of mother applies
to Jesus in his identity as Shekhinah, and in particular in executing judgment in the world143 or weeping like the matriarch Rachel over the fate
of Israel.144 In several other contexts in his writings, Kemper reiterates
and explains this symbolism in similar terms. For instance, in Karsei haMishkan, Kemper cautions the reader not to be astonished that in the
Kabbalah the Messiah is called mother, that is, like the bird that hovers over his fledglings, and he guards them beneath his wings so that
the bat does not come to devour them, and thus Jesus behaved.
This is the way of the secret of Let the mother go (Deut :), that
is, the Messiah, for he came for the purpose of guarding his fledglings
from every trouble and evil affliction.145 In another passage from this
composition, Kemper remarks that the great secret of the masters
of the tradition (ba #alei kabbalah) calling Jesus mother is related to the
idea (derived exegetically from Zohar :b) that he gives birth to new
souls.146
By way of conclusion, we might say that in spite of the longstanding
tradition to apply maternal tropes to Jesus, related especially to the
image of the wounds of the suffering Christ, and in spite of the
140
141
142
143
144
145
146

Zohar :b (Ra #aya Meheimna).

Beriah. ha-Tikhon, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ab.
Ibid., fol. a.
Ibid., fol. b.
Ibid., fols. ab; see Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ab.
Karsei ha-Mishkan, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ba.
Ibid., fol. b.

resurgence of that motif in the wake of some strands of Renaissance

occultism and Reformation pietism, Kemper may be distinguished
from those who preceded him and from contemporary expressions of
this symbolism. Kempers vast knowledge of the Kabbalah facilitated
the utilization of the images of mother and daughter to express the
foundational dogmas of Christian faith, the symbol of mother relates
to the identification of Jesus as the demiurgical Logos, and the symbol
of daughter bespeaks the incarnation of Jesus in the flesh of a mortal
human being. Kempers kabbalistic Christology in a nutshell can be
delineated as follows: The way to comprehend the exaltation of the
Mother is through the degradation of the Daughter. In terms of
the theme of the body, the female images of Jesus indicate a subtle
reappropriation on Kempers part of the Christian barb regarding the
carnal nature of the Jews. The Jewish body is problematized to the
extent that the Jews reject Christ. Indeed, by stubbornly refusing to
recognize and accept the messianic claims of Jesus, the divine presence
abandoned the people of Israel, leaving them as beasts divested of their
human deportment.147 By returning to faith in Jesus, however, the Jews,
who possess all the keys of faith (mafteh. ot emunah) in spite of their
failings,148 can redeem their flesh and thereby reclaim the true angelic
body to become the new human, which is the word incarnate,149 the
Oral Torah, the Son who bears the image of the Father by being both
the Mother exalted above in heaven and the Daughter despoiled below
on earth.

147
148
149

Matteh Mosheh, MS Uppsala Heb. , fols. ab.

Ibid., fol. a.
Ibid., fols. ba.